


Witness This Transformation

by blackidyll



Series: Hallowed Heart [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:24:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackidyll/pseuds/blackidyll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Q first took up the Quartermaster role, he never expected to find his chosen amongst MI6’s ranks. For one, he drew a firm line for himself regarding his subordinates. Q Branch was his, to lead and guide and defend. Q accepted their trust in the spirit it was given, and did his best not to betray it. </p><p>The agents, on the other hand, Q never even considered; he alternated between being desperately defensive on their behalf and wanting to wring their necks for how reckless they can be, with his equipment and with their own lives. </p><p>It should be surprising, then, that he ended up giving his heart away to the most aggravating agent of them all. </p><p> </p><p>(Canon fic, with the AU element that Q is an angel in addition to being the Quartermaster. Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5713894"><i>Safeguard This Hallowed Heart</i></a>).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Witness This Transformation

**Author's Note:**

> If any of you follow on me Tumblr and saw [this post](http://blackidyll.tumblr.com/post/143119132970/), this is not the sequel that is outlined on paper there. That project's quite a serious one, and unfortunately a number of things in real life are really stressing me out right now; I just don't have the brain power to give that project the care and attention it deserves (I'm determined to write it someday though *crosses fingers*). 
> 
> So instead, you get more angel!AU because it's a cute verse and I enjoy figuring out how angel!Q came into his position and how he and Bond fell into a relationship. This isn't as polished as I'd like it to be because my brain's an incoherent mess, but hopefully the stylistic choice still makes sense. Updates... will happen when they happen. I can't promise more ^^;; 
> 
> Special love to Milaryn because she gave me the bunny for the first scene in this fic and I couldn't find a way to work it coherently into _Safeguard This Hallowed Heart_ ~~your little program is still the freaking cutest I cannot~~. And of course, my love to all you readers who commented on the first fic, because you definitely inspired me to think more about this universe.  
> 

Q is used to waking up to an empty bed.

He knows that James is gone even before he opens his eyes. Q’s pinions are incorporeal when he’s mostly unconscious, but James is curious and cunning and persistent and just a little too fixated on Q’s wings to not have his hands on them every opportunity he gets, even when his fingers slide _through_ the feathers half the time; he’s mastered the art of brushing them with enough pressure that Q registers the touch, but light enough that his fingertips skim the fine grain of the feathers without disturbing their tentative, barely tangible form.

Q doesn’t wake up with his head thrumming with indolent pleasure and his wings languid across James’s lap; therefore, James is not in their bedroom in Q’s flat.

A quick dip into the flat’s systems confirms that James isn’t in the flat at all, which means he’s likely at headquarters being a nuisance, and Q slides one eye open for that, squinting.

The tablet left on James’s pillow is in sleep mode and Q flicks out a lick of power before burying his face back into his pillow. He tracks the tablet sleepily as the screen turns on; there’s a window left open on the home screen, and Q delves into the coding to read the messages.

The first message confirms Q’s initial suspicions – _Going back to headquarters to make sure HR deals with the reassignment papers properly_.

The second electronic note simply says – _Tea’s in the thermos_.

There was a time when James would slip in and out of Q’s flat without a word, followed by a shorter period of time after their relationship deepened where James would leave Q handwritten but unsigned notes, thinking they would leave far less of a trace. The switch to the tablet messages only happened after James began staying long enough to wake up with Q, leading to the discovery that, barring emergencies, Q is dead to the world before his first cup of tea. On a normal day, he wouldn't even notice the notes until after he comes back from work. 

The promise of tea is enough to drag Q more fully awake, and he homes in on the familiar silver thermos flask on the bedside table. There is a note tucked strategically under the thermos, impossible to miss. James enjoys his luxuries, and Q is the beneficiary of that indulgence: the note is on creamy cardstock, folded crisply in half, and bears James’s strong, elegant script.

 _Dinner at 19:00. I’ll come find you_.

The note sends a pleasant burst of warmth through Q, and he hides his smile in the wisps of vapour rising from the still-hot tea.

Q might wake up to an empty bed more often than not, but when James is back in the city after a mission, Q never wakes up alone.

The tea is light and fragrant on his tongue, and Q lets his wings unfurl, stretching out his senses to the familiar presence that is the city of London. Headquarters is a glowing beacon that Q could probably find even halfway across the country, given that MI6’s electronic and digital assets are protected from outside influence by Q’s powers, and he skims across the surface of Q Branch’s logs before tapping into the overall headquarters systems. Q doesn’t find James on any of the camera feeds, but a cursory sweep of the surroundings brings up James’s phone on the higher floors, near but not quite in the private Double-O spaces that Q helped to secure, even against himself.  

Well, at least James is steering clear of Q Branch, where the team is bound to be in an uproar over the news of 007’s reassignment – which has since been neatly circumvented by Q – and Q’s not-very-private declaration shortly after.

Unless Q has vastly underestimated MI6’s rumour mill, all of headquarters will have heard of Q claiming James Bond, 007 agent, as his chosen.

As if on cue, Q’s phone chimes twice. The first is, of course, from James; sometimes, Q wonders whether James might possess some supernatural powers of his own, because his sense of timing is uncanny.

_You owe Q Branch a memo._

The next message is from Eve.

 _Fair warning – Bond is here being a nuisance and someone might just shoot him in the chest again, thereby negating all that effort we’ve gone through the past two months trying to safeguard you from his heartbreaking ways_.

Q sighs at the ceiling, but doesn’t bother replying either of them. James won’t come looking for him before their dinner appointment, meaning that Q has that long to call Q Branch off the hunt, and Eve has known James for longer than Q has; Q won’t ever intervene unless she explicitly asks for it.

Instead, he drops the phone back on the bedside table and slides out of bed, thermos cradled carefully in one hand, and pulls his laptop out from under the bed. Q has the afternoon shift – the dinner is less of a romantic gesture on James’s part and more of making sure Q actually eats instead of getting lost in the work – and that should give Q enough time to unravel some of Q Branch’s more creative and dangerous traps, and to compose the memo. Q has always preferred to program by hand, the physicality of a keyboard under his hands and the code on his screen a beautiful language of its own, and the memorandum to Q Branch is something that more than deserves that personal touch.

Considering an entire division of engineers, researchers and programmers as his family is no stranger than having a Double-O agent as his chosen, after all.

Q stretches out his wings, and flicks his status on Q-net from off-duty to active.

\---

When Q first took up the Quartermaster role, he never expected to find his chosen amongst MI6’s ranks. For one, he drew a firm line for himself regarding his subordinates. Q Branch was _his_ , to lead and guide and defend. Q has always been terribly protective of the people and the causes he chose to devote his life to, but it was both gratifying and humbling how quickly Q Branch turned to him. Trust was a rare and precious sentiment in an agency that must necessarily distrust everyone and everything; Q accepted it in the spirit it was given, and did his best not to betray it.

The agents, on the other hand, Q never even considered; as a collective whole, they were shrewd, unpredictable and far, far too perceptive. Q alternated between being desperately defensive on their behalf and wanting to wring their necks for how reckless they can be, with his equipment and with their own lives.

It should be surprising, then, that he ended up giving his heart away to the most aggravating agent of them all.

His and Bond’s first meeting went well enough, all things considered. Q was new enough to his position that no one had quite figured out his most significant secret, but being judged for his age was almost as aggravating as being labelled and considered solely for his celestial status. The verbal spar settled things well enough, however, and Q walked away from the National Gallery with guarded respect for 007, and 007 for him.

Their second meeting was undeniably a disaster.

It was a laptop, that was the irony of it. Q had smiled quietly at it, the laptop that Bond brought back together with Silva to MI6’s temporary headquarters, because electronic devices were his specialty. Q could crack the laptop open like an egg without his angelic powers; with them, he’d have all of Silva’s electronic secrets and more.

Q Branch scanned the laptop for explosives, of course – the smoking ruins of the Vauxhall Cross headquarters were far too vivid an image for any of the team to take chances – and passed the laptop to Q when the tests came out clean. Silva was a too human presence sitting calm and placid in a glass-enclosed cage two floors down in Isolation. MI6 dealt with entirely human affairs, the cruelties and vicious scheming of human-defined organizations, and so there were little protocols in place to consider the supernatural.  

Q, more fool him, didn’t consider that angle either.

Q didn’t believe in divinity; there were humans, who could be considered baseline in scientific terms, and then there were the angels, who possessed preternatural powers, but there was no absolute power, no single being that determined everything. But in the days after, Q whispered quiet thanks to an unknown entity for the fact that Bond had been standing out of the way at the far end of the makeshift lab, a distantly respectful acknowledgment that he was in Q's territory, and that Q had sent the majority of the Communications team out to assist the other divisions.

When the laptop exploded, Q was the only one in its direct blast radius.

He woke to an unnatural silence, broken only by the crackle of fire and muted yelling. Coherent thought was difficult; pain was a distant, muted impression at the edge of Q’s awareness, and fragments of sensation washed and ebbed against that numbness – acrid smoke, sharp in his lungs for just a second, radiating heat around him, and finally, a voice barking out orders in a clipped, deceptively calm tone—

 _Bond_ , he identified, and then—

_I was eleven summers old when I conducted the kite experiment; I confirmed my elemental affinity during that lightning storm. I fell into the world of coding two years later, and never looked back. I have built names for myself on the darknet with three separate aliases. I invented security protocols that redefined the field from within the shadows of Q Branch. I created the Chimera program._

_And I am MI6’s Quartermaster_.

—and it’s that thought that snapped things together in Q’s head, lucidity falling back in place with a disconcerting jolt.

He laid there in the darkness, his heart thundering in his chest. There was a _snap-spark-zing_ across Q’s other senses that he registered as evidence of a particularly powerful electrical pulse, and Q’s so distracted by the possibility that his heart might have stopped for a minute or ten that a long moment went by before he realized that his ears were fine. That the alarms were silent because he’s _knocked out all the power_ , because angels have an automatic self-defence mechanism that activated when they’re been injured badly enough – how badly, Q never cared before to discover, nor in what form his defences would appear as.

Q has the answers to those questions now: when brought to the brink of death – by human standards – his defences apparently manifested as a violent electrical surge.

And Q worked in a division heavily dependent on technology and electronics.

A swell of helpless frustration overwhelmed Q for long moments, followed by sharp fear as Q tried to move – to even just open his eyes – and couldn’t quite manage it. By the time Q wrestled control of himself, there’s the smell of ozone in the air – the fires put out – and Bond’s voice has taken on that familiar stern cadence of a man holding his position against the tide. 

Other things began filtering through the chaos in Q’s head. A cacophony of voices rose above Bond’s, screaming about how their leader was in the rubble – _oh,_ Q thought, _they mean me_ – and they grew steadily angrier when Bond refused to let them approach. Bond was a Double-O, after all; he knew lost causes when he saw one, prioritized the living over the dead, and no mortal could survive being at ground zero of an explosion.

Q, for all he'd like to pretend, wasn’t fully mortal, but no one other than M and Riley and Tanner _knew that_.

“007,” Q tried to say, but his lips – they’re still there, the way his limbs were still intact despite the explosion – trembled, his breath coming out a quiet wheeze. He tried again, with a mental push this time – Q didn’t like projecting his thoughts without warning the recipient, but this was an emergency – but either Q’s powers were too unstable or Bond was too preoccupied to register Q’s mental call, because Bond’s tone of voice didn’t change at all.

Q drew in a deeper breath and choked, his eyes finally blinking open at that involuntary reflex. He swallowed thickly and turned his head towards the sound of Bond’s voice, more than half-blind, the emergency lights – well insulated and battery-powered, thank goodness – in the corridors barely filtering through the lingering smoke into the lab, With all the power knocked out, Q couldn’t use his angelic senses to access the networks, to watch and listen through the cameras or speakers or phones, but he _needed_ Bond to hear him and so the dormant earpiece in Bond's ear sparked to life.

"Bond."

Bond's head jerked back, his entire body going abruptly still. “Q?”

And then he’s running towards Q, towards the overheated twisted remains of the benchtop, the unstable wreckage of metal and glass and stone that Q was half-buried under, and the sudden surge of relief from being heard and panic that Bond was going to throw himself into the rubble gave Q the energy to _move_.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Q said, and forced his arms under himself. He couldn’t seem to register the searing heat of the metal in his current state, but Q staggered all the way upright anyway, pulling away from as much of the wreckage as possible. His hands, when Q glanced down at them, were covered in gritty ash, his cardigan just barely intact; his glasses were lost in the rubble, but when Q brushed his fingertips against his cheek, his skin felt whole.

If he’s going to seemingly come back from the dead, at least Q was doing it without completely traumatizing his team; the last thing they needed, other than finding his mangled corpse, was to see it animated.

He let his hands fall away and turned to Bond and the small handful of Q Branch personnel present – Bond wouldn’t heed a single order for long, and this time, Q suspected his team would be right behind him – but when Q looked up, nearly all of them were staring at the wall behind Q.

Except for Bond, who looked right at Q, comprehension flashing through his eyes. 

Q stared back, one second, two, and then he looked over his shoulder. 

The pain still felt once removed, but Q’s never seen his pinions in such terrible shape: scorched and tattered, feathers snapped or completely torn out in places. They dragged along the floor, refusing to lift into their usual wide spread above his head and shoulders, and Q stared at the unnatural bend in the leading edge of his left wing for long moments – _there isn't a joint there, so how was it bending that way_ – nausea rising up in his throat from sheer emotion alone.

Q might not fully feel the effects of what should be physical injuries, but he's going to pay for surviving the explosion for weeks to come.

The silence was now heavy with the unsaid, his team wide-eyed and pale-faced and very, very still. None of them could see his wings but the evidence was right there on the wall, the inky outline Q’s wings casted in the low emergency lights, in all their twisted, broken glory.

Q lifted his head and tried to steady himself, panic beginning to flutter in his chest once more, when Riley appeared at the lab entrance.

There was a pause as Q’s second took in the scene, and then Riley swept the emergency torch in his hand upwards, casting its heavy beam at Q. Q slammed his eyes closed at the glare, but when he glanced behind him, squinting, the new source of light had washed away the shadow of his wings, leaving just Q himself silhouetted against the wall.

Riley glanced once at Bond and then his eyes flicked back to Q, seemingly ignoring the other Q Branch staff except for the way he stepped pointedly into the space between them and the rubble Q was still standing in. “Silva has escaped. Due to the power outage, we’re unable to determine his current location.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Q said, his filters well and thoroughly shattered. He took a single shaky step, and then an awkward leap when he felt his balance tipping. He managed to clear the worst of the wreckage but landed badly, his knees threatening to buckle under him, but Bond swept forward, tucking one shoulder neatly under Q’s arm before he could collapse, and a moment later Riley was at his other side, the strength of his grip betraying just how worried he was.

“I’m fine.” Q pushed at Bond, letting most of his weight slump on Riley instead. “Go after Silva.”

Bond’s eyes flicked down to Q’s hand on his arm; the man himself didn’t move an inch. “Where shall I start?” he said dryly. “Every electronic device within this building that was connected to the power grid is damaged or offline, including your surveillance systems.”

“If it’s connected to the power grid, I can bring it back online.” He might lose the rest of his feathers doing so but Q doesn’t think it will kill him yet, and finding Silva was the priority. He tried to recall the last thing he saw on the laptop before it exploded. “A map of subterranean London. There’s a stairwell below Isolation.”

“The Tube,” Bond said.

“I believe so. Head there first and tell me when you’ve exhausted your leads. I’ll hear you. I should have some systems up and running by then.”

Bond paused, and then he raised his hand to tap at the comms device in his ear.

“Yes.” Q reached out with what little power he could grasp, careful this time, a sudden realization that he could have taken out Bond’s eardrum earlier, and connected directly to the earpiece; as long as Bond was within London when he spoke into it, Q would hear him. “Go.”

Bond didn’t bother with an acknowledgment; he took a step away from Q and then sprinted for the exit, Q Branch staff scattering before him.

“Secure the lab and seal it,” Riley ordered the team the moment Bond disappeared around the corner, his voice brooking no disagreement. He tugged Q’s arm more firmly over his shoulder and maneuvered the both of them towards lab doors. “Then head to your secondary stations, initiate emergency protocols, and await further orders; you need to be ready when the power comes back on.”

Then they broke into the corridor. It was quieter there, the cleaner air a balm on Q’s senses.

“Secondary observation lab, or up to Command?” Riley asked, the way he enunciated each syllable of every word the only indication of the tension he must be under, and Q let his head dip in relief, grateful for Riley’s unflappable calm.

“Lab. You need to go to Command, take charge of Q Branch.”

“I pushed you to take up the Quartermaster position so I wouldn’t have to take charge of Q Branch,” Riley said, his tone barely changing.

“Just because you didn’t have the title doesn’t mean you weren’t Q Branch’s leader.” Q blinked owlishly, doing his best to ignore his wings each time they came into view.

Riley didn’t bother pursuing the argument; climbing up the emergency stairs when half of Q’s limbs barely cooperated took all their concentration, and Q’s breath came so short and quick after that that Riley had to steer him all the way into the secondary lab. He dropped Q off behind a workstation and Q closed his eyes against the darkness, Riley taking the only light source with him as he darted around the lab. Several corridors and two levels away from the main observation lab, the equipment here were still intact, and Q forced his eyes to open when Riley assembled a decent setup around him – two laptops, additional screens, and comms devices.

Q smiled briefly at him, and then reached out with one hand to spark an earpiece to life, which Riley promptly tucked in one ear. Q worked systematically down the line, awakening the laptops and screens with a direct touch in order to conserve power, before he concentrated and mentally reached out for the familiar tangle of the network lines around him, the link to the servers, forcing the most critical of Q Branch’s systems back online.

A piercing jolt went through his wings even as the systems began to reboot, and Q glanced involuntarily behind him, his shoulders hunching in. The acute pain faded as quickly as it came, but in its wake lingered a deep ache, the way pulled muscles hurt, with an underlying core of wrongness simmering just underneath.

Q pushed the feeling away and tried to summon some semblance of calm, but from the look on Riley’s face, he wasn’t very successful.

“I’m this close to dragging you to Medical,” Riley said.

Q let out a rough laugh. “Medical can’t help me – just look at my wings.”

Riley was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “We did. We all saw the state your wings are in.”

It took a moment for that to sink in, and then Q drew in a sharp breath.

Q’s entirely life has been cloaked in shadow. He’s an angel brought up amongst humankind and he was a hacker by trade, anonymity his first line of defence. He valued his privacy, both by nature and by necessity, and now all of headquarters will soon know his greatest secret. Q was familiar with the way rumours worked in Q Branch. It took just one confirmed sighting, and there had been at least half a dozen Q Branch staff standing around Bond when Q dragged himself from the rubble, when the shadow of his wings appeared on the wall.

The instinctive fear was starting to feel very familiar.

“Q,” Riley said, and the forceful tone of his voice implied that he’d repeated himself several times.

Q’s eyes snapped back to him. Around them, the images on the screens warped and wavered. Riley doesn’t look away, and Q carefully, carefully reined his powers back, watching the screens from the corner of his eyes until the distortions disappeared.

“What are your directives?” Riley said into the silence, before Q’s thoughts could overwhelm him again.

Q reached out with both hands and snagged a keyboard, touching his fingers to the keys to ground himself. He began a series of simple tasks – linking the few awakened systems together in a network, establishing an outside connection, and mentally triaging what other equipment to bring online – and felt a measure of his equilibrium return.

“Get down to the backup generators on the east side. If you can get the power to the lighting and ventilation and other core facility functions up, I can concentrate my efforts on our network. And I really do need you to take control of Q Branch while I work with Bond.”

“Understood.” Riley moved swiftly for the door, taking the emergency torch with him. “Most of our staff is out collaborating with other divisions. I’ll keep the rest of headquarters off your back.”

The silence closed back in around Q the moment Riley disappeared, and Q shoved the panic aside. He felt half blind with only parts of the network back online, but the glow from the screens around Q gave him enough light to see by, and there were people who needed him right now.

So Q did what he always did best when his world turned upside down – he set his fingers on his keyboard, and went to work.

\---

He found Bond at Temple Station.

Q studied the map on his screen, and thought of the comms devices he customized to each Double-O, the unique pattern of signals that identified 007’s particular earpiece.

And then he said, “Let me know if you can hear me, Bond.”

There was a moment of silence – Q could hear his own heartbeat in his ears – and then Bond’s voice crackled over the line, distorted but becoming clearer as Q focused on the connection.

“He’s been here. I’m not sure which train he’s on. Tell me you can track his movements.”

“London’s surveillance systems can. Give me a minute.” Ignoring the twinge of pain, Q pulled up camera feeds all along the District Line, using his powers to push his facial recognition software across all of them simultaneously. He received a hit within seconds. “He’s gone south. There’s a train heading in that direction; it’s just pulling out. Get on it.”

Bond gave a huff of irritation. Q left him to concentrate on catching the train and studied the still-shot image of Silva on his screen, police cap pulled low over his hair and eyes. The feed was minutes old, and Q had yet to catch a more recent glimpse of the man. It was worrying, how easily Silva slipped his bounds, how he managed to stay hidden despite the technology at Q’s disposal and the edge Q’s supernatural powers gave him.

And then Bond said, “Angel.”

Q flinched so violently that he knocked a spare earpiece off the table, the device skidding off into the darkness somewhere beyond Q’s workstation. Q didn’t bother looking for it.

Apparently, he was still human enough to feel hurt, and human enough that his voice came out snappish no matter how hard Q tried to bury the feeling. "Yes, 007?"

There was a poignant pause – Bond's breathing was steady over the line, clear against the restless murmuring of voices and the distant clatter of machinery – and then Bond said, "I meant, you are an angel. A statement."

Q wasn’t sure if his angelic resilience was functioning properly after that explosion; he felt lightheaded, reeling from the whiplash of conflicting emotions – sudden hurt and disappointment, and then, most peculiarly, relief.

“Where are you?”

“Take a wild guess,” Bond said, and then his voice went low, focused. “Q.”

Q ducked his head. Hearing his title – his _name_ – shouldn’t be comforting, the way being called “angel” shouldn’t make him feel like a stranger, like he’s been reduced to a label, a stereotype.

And yet.

“This wasn’t an escape,” Q said in a fair approximation of his usual confidence, and Bond granted him that façade, didn’t call out the faint tremor in Q’s voice. “What Silva did was years in the planning. Blowing up the Vauxhall headquarters, triggering our emergency protocols, knowing we’d retreat down here. He wanted us to capture him; he wanted us to access his computer.”

“He’s fond of explosions. But why plant one in that laptop?”

"I made a mistake,” Q said, and that _hurt_ in a way his wings didn’t, the realization of how badly he’d failed, how his overconfidence lured him right into Silva’s trap. “No one in Q Branch recognized the signs of angelic assistance in preserving the entirety of MI6's electronic records after that first attack on HQ. I assumed that no one outside of MI6 would realize it either. That's was a fatal flaw in my reasoning. Silva knew. The laptop didn’t trigger until I used my powers on it, and the explosion was perfectly constructed to incapacitate an angel. Our most common defence mechanism is to blast out the element we’re affiliated with. And I hold dominion over lightning and electricity."

"An electrical pulse, to knock out the power and shut down our security, allowing him to escape. And it disabled you, the person most likely to be able to track him down," Bond said, a quick assessment. "All right. I don't know the extent of your powers. You need to guide me, Q."

Q’s heart jolted in his chest. He pulled back his powers before he lost more feathers, and set his hands back on the laptop.

“We need to figure out what he’s planned next.”

There was a pause, and then—“He’s going for M. Tell Tanner. Get her out of there.”

Q’s eyes widened and he sent a message directly to Tanner’s laptop, his fingers flying over his keyboard as he alerted security and began pulling up the feeds closest to the tribunal buildings. “Wonderful. I presume you’ll be getting off at Westminster.”

“Along with half of London.”

“Not something you’re used to, I gather.” Q watched Bond’s train pull up at Establishment station. “Bring your equipment back in one piece, and perhaps you’ll get a faster and more private mode of transport as part of your mission kit next time.”

“How about you provide me a car, and then I’ll bring your equipment back in one piece?” Bond said, deadpan.

Both the banter and the silence that settled after felt strangely natural for all that this was only their third conversation with each other and Q’s first real experience working with Bond. It was easy enough keep track of the Double-O with the earpiece acting as an anchor, and Q felt himself relax into a rhythm – monitor Bond, communicate with Tanner and follow up on M’s evacuation plan, hunt for signs of Silva—

_—there—_

“Tribunal building. He’s going straight through the main entrance,” Q said, working entirely on instinct now, merging his powers with his efforts on the laptop and ignoring the strain he could feel in his wings. “There are two others with him, dressed as security, they’ve abandoned their posts.”

“I’m on my way,” Bond’s voice crackled over the line, Q’s hold on the connection wavering as he focused on Silva. The Double-O was a mere minute away but that still left a dangerous window of opportunity for Silva to act, and Q forewent subtlety entirely, sending an alert to every single electronic device within the courtroom.

There were no working cameras in the room, but Q pieced together what happened next from the audio feed of dozens of phones and laptops: the sudden discord of voices and moving furniture and the distinct staccato report of gunfire.

“Shots fired,” Q said, even as some devices blinked out of his awareness, destroyed in the ensuing chaos. “I think Silva and his men are still by the exits. Someone – two people – are firing back from near M and Tanner’s former location.”

“Focus on the escape route,” Bond said, not an order but a statement, and then he entered the fray, steady gunshots sounding over the line.

Q hesitated, but just for a second. Then he cut himself off entirely from the tribunal building, maintaining only the link to Bond’s earpiece, and began tracking the MI6 getaway car instead.

He’s so focused on watching their surroundings for enemies when Tanner bundled M into the car that he barely registered Bond ducking fluidly into the driver’s seat. The Double-O drove off before Tanner could react and Q quickly tagged on, following the car with the traffic cameras and resisting the urge to hurl questions at Bond; M was doing that just fine, her demeanour cool and regal, her voice affronted but unsurprised.

Q’s email pinged, Tanner’s message straightforward and to the point: _Where is 007 taking M?_

 _I have absolutely no idea_ , Q was tempted to send back, and then Bond clicked his earpiece, a quick and surprisingly polite warning.

“Q,” the Double-O said, and Q sat up straighter at the serious note in his voice. “I need help.”

“I’m tracking the car. Where are you going?”

“We’re about to disappear. I need you to lay a trail of breadcrumbs impossible to follow for anyone except Silva. Will you do it?”

Q drew in a sharp breath. A cybersecurity expert – a hacker – of Q’s calibre could definitely lay that trail, much less one that has angelic powers boosting those skills, but Bond didn’t know that. There was a scatter of feathers around Q’s makeshift workstation, lacklustre and fading the moment they broke from Q’s tattered wings, and Bond has witnessed Q unlocking a complicated fail-safe protocol only to trip right into Silva’s trap.

In their line of work, faith was much rarer than trust.

“I’m guessing this isn’t strictly official,” Q said softly. Not that it mattered; Q’s not entirely sure he has a job at MI6 after this. He might have hidden his heritage by flying beneath MI6’s shadow, but this situation was too public now, explosions and enquiries and daring escapes.

The government loved their celestial assets. Mallory and the ISC were going to have a field day when they reviewed this case.

“Not even remotely,” Bond said.

Q bit back a laugh – it would probably come out slightly hysterical – and then the lights came on with startling suddenness, the air conditioning clanking to a start before quietening, moving air a faint coolness on Q’s skin.

“Q?”

“I’m all right.” Q squinted in the brightness, his hand rising automatically to adjust his glasses, only pausing when he remembered that he’d lost them in the explosion. “Silva knows to target angels. Get rid of the earpiece. I’ll follow you on the traffic cameras.”

Bond’s tone of voice didn’t change, but there was an air of amusement in the way he said the words. “I’d best take advantage of that rare directive then. Stay safe, Q.”

And before Q could snipe back that that was _his_ line, that he’s not the one out in the field, the connection snapped, and Q knew with absolutely certainty that he wasn’t getting any of Bond’s equipment back in one piece. With some effort, Q could hold a link even to broken devices, but not when they’re shattered into a hundred unidentifiable fragments.

He switched the traffic feeds tracking Bond’s progress to the background, letting the Double-O build up a lead, and turned his attention to the secondary screen, where Tanner’s messages were piling up.

 _I’m tracking both of them. 007 has a plan_. After a small pause, Q added, _The secret is out. Q Branch saw my silhouette on the wall_.

Tanner’s reply simply said, _Mallory is in treatment for a gunshot wound to the left shoulder. I will be at HQ in twenty minutes_ , because Tanner knew how to read between the lines.

So did Q. In M’s absence, Mallory was the highest ranking personnel attached to MI6, but he might be out of commission just long enough for Q to give Bond a fighting chance at taking Silva out.  

Q laid a perfect trail of breadcrumbs, and waited.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I love slow burn relationships so you're getting that together with the established relationship timeline *runs away*.
> 
>  **Edit Dec '16** : I've gotten a few comments from people looking forward to new chapters (I love all your comments ♥), and I just wanted to give you a quick update. The soonest the second chapter will go up is February '17 ^^;;; This isn't because I don't love this fic, or that I'm not writing more 00Q! I've joined the [00Q Reverse Bang](http://00qreversebang.tumblr.com/) again this year, and I've been steadily working on that project with inspiration from my brilliant artist since late October. Postings for the Reverse Bang begin mid-January and I'll likely be editing the RB fic until that date, hence the Feb and later estimate for more angel!AU chapters. 
> 
> _Safeguard This Hallowed Heart_ was my entry for last year's 00Q Reverse Bang, so I'm very much hoping all of you will like what I produce for this year's RB. I promise there will be more angel!AU - I'll finish any fic that I start posting, even if it takes me a really long time to get to the end. Thanks for sticking with me in the meantime ♥
> 
> Come talk to me on [Tumblr](http://blackidyll.tumblr.com/) any time!


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